Shooting a school play, need advise

Hi,

I'm shooting a high school performance where the seating is on stage, close to the actors, and I need some tips!

I'm using a 70-200 f/2.8 IS L, on a 5D, with no flash.

I usually shoot in manual, wide open at ISO 1600, in one-shot mode.

At the rehearsal, I had trouble getting good exposures because the lighting changed too frequently from dark to bright, and the actors are moving too quickly.

HELP!

Try shooting in AV (aperture priority) mode wide open using center weighted average metering because trying to shoot in manual mode in quick changing lighting is quite difficult.

Any chance you could put up some examples of what you took at the rehearsal with EXIF data?

Av with center weighted will work well with such an event because they always put lights on the characters faces and that's what you want the photo of. It should work much better in theory.